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What is the point of training one’s employees?
April 26, 2013 | Leave a comment
Training one’s employees represents a cost. It also requires time and workforce mobilisation. Distance training, classroom-based training, or both? This implies making strategic choices according to available logistic and financial means. But what results can be expected? Are the benefits genuinely tangible?
Training, a patent springboard to success
Vocational training is a fantastic asset for the future of companies, even if they are not necessarily aware of it. Indeed, there is a relationship between increasing employee skills and company productivity.
As early as in 2009, it was estimated that “moderate training effort made within a company is associated with a productivity gain of circa 1% relative to a company that does not implement training. This moderate effort corresponds to 11 hours’ training per company employee. “*
Just a few hours of training for a 1% productivity gain! Even though the number of training hours dispensed is not proportional to the productivity gain, there is no need to be a keen economist to grasp the benefits of training.
Companies must back their employees, this precious value-creating force.
ROI measurement facilitated through digital learning
When a company makes an investment, for internal training in the present case, it is only legitimate for it to wish to measure the impact of this action. But how can it do so?
In digital learning (i.e. training using the computer as a performance vector), the LCMS and LMS platforms can provide precious indicators, facilitating the measurement of return on investment for training courses.
These must fit into a global context that includes other estimation factors.
Based on the principle that a company’s human resources are a key source of value creation and that there are ways of assessing training efficiency, the answer to the question “What is the point of training one’s employees?” becomes obvious: to support and ensure the company’s growth!
Digital learning: the time for all digital is now!
March 1, 2013 | Leave a comment
The arrival of digital technology has overturned the codes of corporate training. Indeed, computers have take up their place in learning techniques, both in distance and classroom-based training, also contributing to the emergence of original education methods. How can we defined digital learning? What has been its impact on training techniques? Will digital learning take over from blended learning?
Digital learning, what is it?
Simply put, digital learning is THE fundamental trend currently shaking up the training world. What does it consist of? Over the past few years, the integration of computers into training trades has become common knowledge, leading to the democratisation of e-learning. Digital learning takes this integration further, now encompassing educational content for classroom-based training. This presence of digital technologies, both in e-learning and in classroom-based courses, is the essence of digital leaning: media digitisation and interactivity throughout all educational materials.
Visible progress conferred by digital learning
Digital learning, democratised in training, is not limited simply to e-learning. It is becoming established throughout the value chain focused on educational efficiency (creation, management and distribution of educational material). Some examples of the benefits of digital learning:
- Greater training interactivity;
- Use of digital media in classroom-based training;
- Implementation of remote collaboration within work teams;
- Training industrialisation;
- Enhanced computer security;
- Data backup to cloud computing solutions;
- Emergence of fast learning (very short duration training using online content), etc.
So what about blended learning in all that?
To head off any rumours: NO, digital learning is not a substitute for blended learning. Blended learning (combining e-learning and classroom-based learning) is a learning method, a “way of training” learners. Digital learning, on the other hand, is a technological upgrade that impact learning.
Care must be taken not to confuse the learning method, which is an educational use, and digitisation, corresponding to optimised technological processing.
Current training courses (e-learning, blended learning and classroom-based learning) are undergoing a digitisation phase, offering benefits for both training departments and companies.
No tracking, no e-learning!
January 7, 2013 | Leave a comment
Tracking is a crucial aspect of any trainer’s work. In distance learning, tracking is an integral part of the teaching approach, because it allows for online mentoring. Let’s review the concept of tracking and the educational role it plays in distance learning.
Tracking: what is it, and what purpose does it serve?
As described in our e-learning glossary,”Tracking is done via the LMS platform, to gather teaching information about learners’ progress through their e-learning course: time spent on distance training, number of log-ins, scores earned on online assessments, etc.”. This valuable intelligence, which is directly tied to a learner’s advancement through an e-learning module (or SCO, “Sharable Content Object”), will enable trainers to respond with rigorous, personalised online mentoring (following up with each learner, studying the recorded results, sending reminders, offering support, etc.).
So tracking is crucial - but not using just any distance learning tool!
Indeed, it is impossible to begin tracking with a simply average e-learning tool. In order to track a SCO on an LMS platform, the two must be compatible: this is called interoperability. Standards within the distance learning market, particularly the widely-used SCORM standard, guarantee interoperability between a SCO and an LMS. Following the SCORM standard ensures that the advanced feature of learner tracking will be available for distance learning content and LMS platforms. In short, where tracking is concerned, it’s best to use SCORM-compliant tools! The AICC standard also makes tracking possible, but it is less commonly used: a good e-learning solution will be compatible with both standards.
Tracking applied to the case of mobile learning
Although mobile learning is a developing trend in distance training, driven by growing demand from companies, few publishers of e-learning solutions offer suitable authoring tools compatible with the SCORM standard that can be used to produce m-learning modules. As such, you must carefully research the software solutions you intend to use. The inevitable distance between learner and trainer in m-learning, for example, absolutely must be compensated for with conscientious online follow-up. Failing this, distance learning will become less productive.
Teaching materials: the wealth of training departments
December 14, 2012 | Leave a comment
These days, teaching materials represent a considerable competitive asset, although companies are often unaware of their existence and value, making them slow to take advantage of this asset.
What is teaching material?
Together, the teaching resources (either temporary or permanent) generated by human resources departments for blended learning courses are referred to as “teaching materials.” These formally and informally generated teaching materials accumulate over time into teaching assets. Ultimately, teaching materials represent the company’s formalised expertise.
4 types of teaching material
We can distinguish between formal or “traditional” materials, and informal materials, which are innovative content often created virally. What are the 4 components of teaching material, who do they target, and what role do they play?
–>Components: formal materials intended for learners
These materials allow learners to keep a record of the course they have taken.
Examples: slide shows (PPT), duplicated notes, e-learning modules, video and audio files, etc.
–>Components: formal materials intended for trainers
This type of material is significant, because it can be used to reproduce an identical training session, with the same teaching quality.
Example: the teacher’s guide, a complete road map for the trainer, specifically defines the process to follow and steps to be taken when teaching a course.
–>Components: informal materials intended for learners
This type of content results from work by a community and is spread through social learning tools (blogs, wikis, forums, etc.).
Examples: notes, feedback, etc.
–>Components: informal intangibles intended for learners
This refers to the mentoring provided by teachers to those learning from them. “Informal intangible components, such as mentoring, represent an extremely volatile form of teaching expertise since they are generally not structured and remain ‘invisible’ ” (excerpted from the white paper “Optimising teaching assets: the new challenge for HR”).
Examples: mentoring, coaching.
Once an entity’s teaching materials are recognized, the next step is to put them to use and optimise them as much as possible in order to convert them into a true strategic advantage… but the question is, how?
Rapid learning (TvLearn) to strengthen face-to-face training
October 24, 2012 | Leave a comment
What do the latest e-learning figures show? In France, companies with more than 5,000 employees appear to be major users of e-learning, representing 60% of market share. E-learning is becoming as widespread in companies as in training centres, driven by the availability of IT tools that are accessible to all. The rapid learning feature called “TvLearn”, is one of these tools which is promoting the inclusion of e-learning into training departments.
TvLearn: your trainers on the Internet
TvLearn is a technology developed by the e-learning software publisher e-doceo for quickly producing training content. This learning methodology is part of the trend described as “rapid learning”, which simplifies e-learning design through the production of short transmissive content (see our article “Rapid learning: advantages and drawbacks”).
The TvLearn feature, available in the rapid learning software elearning animgallery, enables trainers or teachers to simultaneously record their webcam and their microphone, capture their PowerPoint or make screen films. In just a few clicks, the e-learning module is in the box and ready to be broadcast to learners.
Rapid learning and vocational training, the winning combination
For companies, the use of rapid learning presents significant advantages, first of all for trainers:
- The internalised production and broadcast of content rendered in a condensed way within a rapid learning module of a few minutes only. The impact of e-learning is thus maximised
- No waste of time for them because a rapid learning module using TvLearn technology takes only a few minutes to shoot
But also for learners:
- A round-up of important information that needs to be remembered
-Viewing at will, in any place and at any time
-A standardisation of the skills acquired by all learners
Companies which choose to combine e-learning with their so-called conventional face-to-face training, significantly optimise the strength of their training. The case of the Moser School shown in the documentary shot by Radio Télévision Suisse is a good example of the successful inclusion of e-learning, in this case in a training centre. The increasing number of organisations that are engaging in the production and broadcast of rapid learning classes proves the strength and relevance of blended learning (the kind of learning that combines face-to-face training and e-learning, also called mixed training).
*Féfaur
Definition of the terms LCMS and LMS: what are the differences?
September 13, 2012 | Leave a comment
LCMS and LMS, the two terms sound alike, are sometimes associated and frequently confused. And yet… The time has come to shed some light on these two technical appellations from the continuous training world.
LCMS : definition and principle of use
Acronym of Learning Content Management System
An LCMS is a system designed to create and manage teaching materials for blended learning (distance or classroom-based). It is first and foremost a space used to centralise learning content, rendering it easy to search, identify and reuse at any time, whatever the training needs.
The LCMS provides tools for creating training content, that is then manipulated by the teaching design teams, not by the learners.
The LCMS platform is thus intended for training production experts and is used upstream of content dissemination (this 2nd step is performed via an LMS platform).
LCMS : definition and principle of use
Acronym of Learning Management System
The LMS platform is a training dissemination tool, with particular emphasis on distance training. As an online platform, the LMS serves learning content to learners, records training monitoring data (score, time spent, etc.) and facilitates course tutoring.
The LMS platform enables trainers to upload distance training content, but also to precisely monitor and organise the learning courses for their learners. These learners’ results are results are recorded and the LMS generates comprehensive results of their progress through the distance learning course. For learners, the LMS platform is seen as a website onto which they log and access their own distance training content.
In summary, the LCMS is not an LMS to which an authoring tool has been added, but rather a distinct software family in its own right.
LCMS vs LMS : overview of differences
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>> LCMS |
>> LMS
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Users |
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Training services Production studios |
Training services Learners |
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Training content creation |
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Yes |
No |
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Training content dissemination |
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No |
Yes |
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Content production process management features |
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Yes |
No |
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Content optimisation and reuse assistance |
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Yes |
No |
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Data sharing between trainers and learners |
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No |
Yes |
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Analysis of training results |
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No |
Yes |
HTML5 / Flash, how will these be used in distance training in the future?
August 13, 2012 | Leave a comment
HTML5 is considered as the Internet computer language of the future, logically following on from version 4. Though the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, international Web standardisation body) has not as yet made any decisions concerning the rules that will define this new standard, many companies have already started down the HTML5 road. In distance training, the production of training content is also impacted by this change, to which e-learning software must adapt.
What is HTML5?
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is one of the fundamental data languages used to represent web pages by means of tags. Viewable online, HTML documents are accessed using web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, etc.).
The HTML language is about to undergo its fifth major upgrade with HTML5, aimed at preserving maximum compatibility of websites over all commercially available computer terminals (personal computers, smartphones and touch tablets). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is currently preparing its guidelines for this standard, that it only intends to publish in 2014.
HTML5 in a transition phase
Despite the widespread interest in this technology, HTML5 remains in a state of transition, though this does not appear to discourage companies in the least. Many of these companies are progressively adopting HTML5, particularly in the distance training sector, in which this technology is used to produce mobile training content: in this case, we refer to “m-learning”, or “mobile learning”.
Currently, most e-learning software applications use Flash, which is dedicated to PC/Mac terminals, to create and disseminate interactive and animated training content. e-Learning software publishers are progressively adapting their products to the rise in mobile learning. Training content for distance training must now be able to offer optimum compatibility with all web browsers and computer platforms. There is, however, one considerable drawback: HTML5 is a standard whose outlines have not as yet been drawn. This is thus currently causing a major tag homogeneity and interpretation problem, that varies according to the browser used.
HTML5 + Flash : a winning combination!
In distance training, the mobile learning trend is getting stronger by the day, causing an increasing demand in terms of training content production and dissemination over mobile terminals.
The main challenge for users and, consequently, for e-learning software publishers, is to offer tools able to make use both of Flash and HTML5, thus offering dual compatibility and covering the entire distance training market.
Social learning or training 2.0
May 2, 2012 | Leave a comment
While it is clear that formal training retains its pre-eminence and is recognised throughout the world of work, informal learning, hitherto little known and appreciated, is now established as a new form of participatory learning. Some countries even validate informal learning in the skills development of individual career paths (”Validation of Acquired Experience” in France, “NVQs” in the UK, etc.). What role does social learning play in optimising training, and in particular distance training via e-learning platforms?
Social learning: what is its principle?
Social learning tends to supplement distance training through social media, aimed at creating more effective communication between students and learning managers as well as optimising the training course objectives.
Social learning develops informal training (learning outside the scope of a structured learning system, based, in particular, on interaction and an exchange of experience) by allowing the learner to supplement the knowledge gained formally: By sharing, questioning, communicating and in short evolving in a more social and practical environment, s/he acquires and internalises even more knowledge.
Remember that nearly 90% of learning is informal: ever-present in our daily lives, discussion with or advice from colleagues or learning managers as well as experience are very important factors in shaping us. In this context, clearly, the presence of social learning would appear to be a natural part of distance training.
Social networking: discussions to enhance learning
Besides the emails or virtual classrooms that have already been a part of e-learning for several years, social learning is today going further in the social dimension by providing the community features of social networking within e-learning platforms. It promotes learning communities via various media and social tools such as wikis, blogs, forums, etc. E-learning platforms feature tools for promoting sharing, such as microblogging. An effective addition for distance training, allowing ever-closer collaboration and communication between the various players.
Off-the-shelf or made-to-order e-learning, where to start ?
May 2, 2012 | Leave a comment
Between off-the-shelf e-learning and made-to-order e-learning,there are clearly two types of training solutions. Each has its advantages and drawbacks, so let us to clarify them.
Made-to-order e-learning, off-the-shelf e-learning: what are the differences?
Off-the-shelf contents are “turnkey” e-learning modules that can be used immediately. They are supplied ready to use, so no production deadlines are required.
It is also a limitation of these pre-designed modules that cannot meet the specific needs of each company. Off-the-shelf e-learning content is on set topics.
Unlike off-the-shelf content, the production of modules on demand will result in the supply of training that exactly matches the company’s expectations and requirements.
Ultimately, the production of made-to-order online training becomes essential as soon as the said entity wishes to give training to its human resources on topics that are specific to the activity and the business environment.
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>> Off-the-shelf learning content << |
>> Tailored learning content << |
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Gives training on general topics (computing, foreign languages, etc.) |
Gives training on topics specific to the company (work environment, business line, company policy, etc.) |
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Targets a broad audience |
Content tailored to specific groups |
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Available and usable immediately |
Production time from a few hours for rapid learning, to a few months for serious game-type productions |
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No involvement of internal teams in producing the e-learning content |
Contribution by internal teams |
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The company adapts to the e-learning content sold on the market |
The e-learning content exactly matches the company’s requirements and training needs. |
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Limitation in the choice of topics addressed |
All subjects can be treated provided they can be adapted to the e-learning system |
Made-to-order or off-the-shelf e-learning: where to start?
For businesses, choosing off-the-shelf e-learning content is often a way of taking a first step towards distance training. However, it is a very bad idea! Indeed, in many cases, starting with off-the-shelf e-learning is the best way to fail since to validate the effectiveness of e-learning in the company, it must be made strategic. To do so, it must tackle the operational problems of the organisation (and not address general, non personalised issues).
Where off-the-shelf e-learning proposes to rent or sell standard training on generic topics (office automation, foreign languages, management, etc.), the production of made-to-order e-learning content provides training modules tailored to the customer’s specific needs.
In all cases, effective distance tutoring must be implemented by the training department, and this is especially true for off-the-shelf e-learning content within the context of the company.
M-learning, when e-learning makes use of mobility
January 27, 2012 | Leave a comment
Mobile phones, laptops, tablets, mp3 players. So many mobile telecommunication tools have become part of our daily lives! Mobile learning or m-learning is the logical consequence of this phenomenon, thus opening up new horizons for distance training.
M-learning: is mobile training the future?
Although e-learning enables training in any place and at any time, m-learning goes further by reaching your learners outside those places where they usually have access to their training. A means of training suited to a young target audience which is familiar with new technologies.
Although m-learning is growing quickly, it cannot deliver the same training content as distance training on traditional PCs. The content and form of m-learning courses must be examined and optimised for remote distribution using tools with different technical characteristics.
5 good reasons to use mobile learning
Make the best use of Web 2.0 within a community logic
- Ideal for carrying out training exercises
- Develop new activities thanks to the features offered by mobile ICTs (photo, film, email, chat, calendar, calculator, social networks, etc.)
- Propose a new kind of distance training using an everyday device
- Dematerialise the boundaries of the training space
The m-learning that has been talked about for the last 2 years has been so far more of a marketing argument than an educational reality. However, with the arrival of tablets which in some cases are taking precedence over PCs, the trend could be quickly reversed.
To design your own remote training courses, or to sub-contract their creation, go to the e-doceo website.
